Check Your Pressure!

A couple of ways I like to check on pressure in the high register (as in too much!) beside just the sound (the best indicator) is with vibrato, lip trills and shakes, glissandos, doits etc. If you are playing towards the top of your register, you add hand vibrato and nothing happens......too much pressure. Same for lip trills and shakes. If you think you have a killer high F but can't play a shake, you might be using excess pressure (I like air speed instead, through a well developed embouchure!). Think that E is rock solid, but can't doit up from it? Could be the arm strong method is holding you back. Glissando the same indicator.

Using efficient mechanics is the solution. The above, along with the sound, might tell you there's a challenge with the pressure you are using.

I've been writing on the reduction of pressure on a thread on "another site" recently . . . from a different direction but with the same expected results . . . and same expected disasters if one resorts to the old "Arm-Strong" method!

A couple of ways I like to check on pressure in the high register (as in too much!) beside just the sound (the best indicator) is with vibrato, lip trills and shakes, glissandos, doits etc. If you are playing towards the top of your register, you add hand vibrato and nothing happens......too much pressure. Same for lip trills and shakes. If you think you have a killer high F but can't play a shake, you might be using excess pressure (I like air speed instead, through a well developed embouchure!). Think that E is rock solid, but can't doit up from it? Could be the arm strong method is holding you back. Glissando the same indicator.

Using efficient mechanics is the solution. The above, along with the sound, might tell you there's a challenge with the pressure you are using.

Vibrato was how Maynard developed his upper register, remember that. However, something I'd like to add is often times I'll stand in a mirror while I'm practicing and watch what my legs are doing. Often, I'll make sure my stance is planted into the ground like I'm setting a pick on Shaq, and often that forces the windpipe to stop doing the work and forces the large muscles around the lungs to provide the power necessary to sustain those notes.

I've been writing on the reduction of pressure on a thread on "another site" recently . . . from a different direction but with the same expected results . . . and same expected disasters if one resorts to the old "Arm-Strong" method!

I love your last line!!!

Sincerely,

Tom

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Greetings

Tom Turner led me to a new embouchure that I have been building over the past year. It is pretty simple I started compessing my lips directly into each other right in the center and I started trying to release the tension in my corners. It was a struggle for a while the corners have less tension and I have much less mouthpiece pressure even in the upper registers.